A Witty Little Knitter
by Special Patrol Groupie
Summary: The story behind the famous scarf.


"My goodness, Doctor!" exclaimed Mme. Notredame, springing up from her chair by the fireplace. A ball of bright red yarn rolled across the floor. "You're soaked through!"

The Doctor stood dripping in the doorway, his hat limp, his hair flat, his face flushed. He tried to respond to Mme. Notredame and could only manage a rattling cough.

"I told you not to go outside with that cold!" she clucked, shepherding him to the chair she had just left and taking his coat and hat. He sprawled over the chair, shaking uncontrollably. "And you should have wrapped up better. Ma foi, you weren't even wearing a scarf!"

The Doctor coughed up a mouthful of phlegm and spat it into the fireplace, where it sizzled in protest. He took a few cautious breaths and looked over at the tiny woman who, standing, was only as tall as he was stitting. "I never wear scarves," he managed.

"Whyever not?"

"They're never long enough," he said. "They look ridiculous on me –" He had to cough again.

"Oh, vanity!" she exclaimed, bringing him a blanket and draping it around him. "You keep doing that and you won't live to look ridiculous. Drink this." She gave him a small goblet, half full.

"What is it – ugh!" It smelled of alcohol. He avoided the stuff whenever possible.

"It's eau de vie. It's medicinal and it's warming. You'll feel better. Drink it, Doctor!"

The Doctor held his nose and drank it. The liquid burned down his throat and into his stomach.

"Who says medicine has to taste worse than the disease?" he wanted to know, putting the snifter on the chimneypiece – but he did feel somewhat warmer.

"Oh, you men of learning, always so irascible! It's good for you. Why did you insist on going out in this weather?"

"Erasmus," he gasped. Then, after another coughing fit: "I wanted to hear him."

"Oh, piffle! That pipsqueak? You're far more learned than he could ever hope to be. Make him come to you."

"Perhaps I should have," he allowed as she put a bowl of hot chicken soup in his hands. He was suddenly very, very tired, but he made himself eat the soup before climbing the stairs to the bedroom the Notredames had allotted him. He shivered out of his clothes and into his nightshirt and crawled under the covers.

***

The next day he was very ill, in and out of delirium, which meant that he was running a temperature of at least 65. In his lucid moments he was aware of Mme. Notredame sitting by his bedside, knitting when she wasn't fussing over him. M. Notredame, a noted apothecary, was also hovering over him, dosing him with herbs and nasty mixtures that – bless him, he was doing the best he could with limited knowledge – may well have been doing him more harm than good. The Doctor was sure he had pneumonia – and if he could get back to the TARDIS, or send someone back to the TARDIS, he could get medication that would kill the infection in less than a day. But he was too weak to go out there himself and too uncertain to trust either M. or Mme. Notredame with the truth of his origins. They might look on him with awe as an angelic being, or they might decide he was a warlock and turn him over to the authorities, who would surely burn him at the stake. He thought at least M. Notredame could handle it, and maybe his wife too, but taking that risk when he was unable to defend himself seemed foolhardy.

But before he could make the decision, he grew so ill he was too weak to speak more than a few words, and before long he was too weak to even remain conscious long enough to remember what it was he wanted to ask of them.

Sometimes he surfaced enough to tell if it was day or night – but no matter what time it was, he heard Mme. Notredame's knitting needles clicking against each other and the soft whisper of the yarn.

He dreamed terrible dreams, then he stopped dreaming … it was all black with that irregular click-click-clicking. He couldn't think in French anymore, or any of the dozens of languages he had picked up in his travels. He understood what was being said over him, if he managed to wake up enough to hear voices, but his responses (which he was too weak to utter) were all in Gallifreyan.

He caught one discussion between M. Notredame and two men he didn't know, one speaking with a reedy tenor voice and the other with a slow, sonorous baritone.

"Surely he's dead," said the higher voice. "His flesh is cold."

"But it is supple," M. Notredame said, "and anyway, he continues to breathe and have a pulse. He sweats. He moves. He takes water and broth."

"Regardless," said the lower voice, "surely you understand the need for extreme unction, M. Notredame."

"Yes, well," M. Notredame said, "I don't believe he is a Christian."

"He does look rather Jewish. Relative of yours?"

"Yes," M. Notredame lied.

"Surely you would wish him to receive the gift of salvation through Jesus Christ –"

"That has to be his own choice, and you know that, Father Michel. He is in no condition to make the choice. And I do not think he would choose to become a Catholic. He is of a very skeptical, doubing turn of mind."

"There is no time to delay," the priest said. "Monsieur l'Etrangere, do you wish to be received into the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church?"

_Now why would I want to do a thing like that?_ the Doctor wanted to snap. But all that came out was the English word "Why."

"He said _oui_. Very well, then, M. l'Etrangere, I receive you into the Catholic Church, and I baptize you ... Thomas."

He tried to protest, but he couldn't move; speaking that one word had drained him. As the voices around him faded into a distant murmur, he wondered what they would make of it if he began to regenerate …

***

He woke with the feeling that a significant amount of time had passed. There was a patch of oil on his forehead and one on his lips. His head had been shaved. He was holding something wooden – a cross with the figure of a slender, bearded man nailed to it. He caught sight of his hand; it looked positively skeletal – it didn't seem to be his. And Mme. Notredame was still knitting away at something and murmuring in Latin:_ Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee …_

"I thirst," he croaked.

"Praise God! Bonne Jesu, merci! Merci!" she whispered, setting the project aside and hurrying to bring him some apple cider. He tried to sit up and almost fainted.

"Slowly, slowly," she said, sliding her arm under his pillow and gradually lifting his head and shoulders. "You're very weak. God was merciful; he doesn't want you quite yet, apparently."

The cider irritated his throat; he thought he would prefer pure water – but then again, there wasn't much of that around here. And it did wet his mouth and raise his glucose level. He wondered how long it had been since he had been able to take nourishment.

"We'll see how you hold that down, and if you do, I'll give you some broth," she said. "Then maybe some blancmange, then some bread and milk, and maybe a little chicken."

"Thank you, Madame. You are very kind."

"I only follow our lord's teachings," she said.

He wasn't sure if she meant her husband, some nobleman, or her deity.

"Speaking of whom, in gratitude for sparing your life, you should go to church as soon as you're able and thank him."

"Thank who?"

She seemed taken aback. "Well, God, of course. He spared your life."

"Rubbish," he said before thinking about how that would sound to a person of this time and place. "It was simply a matter of my body overcoming the disease."

"Perhaps that's how it appears from a purely material perspective," she said evenly, "but what happened in the spiritual realm? God ordained you should live so you could continue to serve him. God's will is not to be denied."

"I serve no god," the Doctor spat – again before he reviewed his words and how she might perceive them. But her placid countenance did not twitch a micrometer.

"You may think you do not, but you do, Doctor. Oh yes, you do. You are more of a Christian than many who spend hours and hours on their knees reciting the rosary. You are more of a Christian than many priests, bishops, cardinals – even many popes. You look out for the powerless and the weak. You refuse to tolerate injustice. You may deny God as we understand him, but you do his will. Let us say no more about it; when you recover, we will give thanks for his mercy."

And she left the room calmly, leaving the Doctor to wonder again what he might have said in his delirium.

***

When he was able to walk, he accompanied Mme. Notredame to the church, mostly out of curiosity. He followed her lead; he dipped his fingers into the fount and applied water to his forehead, sternum and both shoulders; he bobbed to the enormous version of the small cross-with-a-man-nailed-to-it and slid into the long bench; he knelt, folded his hands together and looked at the altar.

The thing was, he'd known the historical Jesus. Rav Yoshue ben Yosef. Nice chap. A fellow maverick. Put to death for being a little too critical of the Romans. Or so it seemed. When Mary Magdalene came with news that he had "risen from the dead", the Doctor realized belatedly that this "rabbi" was in fact a Time Lord. The idea of millions of people worshipping one of his own was ... well, amusing.

He had run into "Yoshue" a few days after his regeneration. All the Doctor had to do was give him a certain look, and Yoshue just smiled and said, in Gallifreyan, "It's about time you figured out what I really am, you idiot."

Yoshue had indeed been as much of a maverick as the Doctor; he had been trying to subtly nudge the humans into a more, well, humane way of behaving, without sanction from the Time Lords. He knew he was going to get into serious trouble back home; he didn't care.

They located Yoshue's TARDIS, which was one of the most advanced ever made. It could be invisible when the situation demanded it. And it could appear as a beam of light. And when Yoshue decided it was time to leave Earth, he seemed to ascend into the heavens – and the people of Earth, technologically backwards as they were, came to exactly the wrong conclusion. The Doctor found his own TARDIS and left that time and place, shaking his head.

And in the intervening time, humans had so distorted Yoshue's character and life story that the Doctor, who had been there, scarcely recognized it. Even the figure nailed to the cross looked very little like Yoshue. It was, he realized, based on some painting of Cesare Borgia. Now if that wasn't an irony, nothing was.

He couldn't thank this figure, this idol, or even the man it supposedly represented ... but he was thankful nevertheless, that he was still alive and in this life, and that there were good people like the Notredames. He wasn't sure who or what to thank, but that didn't matter.

It took him a few more weeks to recover his strength to the point he could move on with his exploration of Renaissance Europe. He'd already spent far longer with the Notredames than he ever intended to spend in this time period.

He dressed in clothing suitable for early spring – the felt hat, the long coat over the white blouse, the trousers tucked into his boots.

"One thing before you go," Mme. Notredame said, holding up a rolled-up piece of knitting.

"What is this?" he asked. He could see shades of brown and purple and gray and green and red in it, all different widths.

"It's a scarf," she said. "Now lean over and I'll help you put it on."

She unrolled it – and it was positively enormous.

"Am I supposed to wear it doubled lengthwise?"

"Oh, heavens no!" she said, looping it all the way around his neck and adjusting the ends until they were hanging evenly. "I just kept thinking about your refusal to wear scarves and I thought, 'If that man lives, I'll make sure he has a scarf that is long enough for him.' Now you have no excuse."

The Doctor had to laugh. "Oh, Madame, you are a witty little knitter. I shall treasure this scarf and your memory as long as I live."

"Please God it may be a long and fruitful life," she said.

"I think it will be," the Doctor said, taking up his walking stick. "My family does tend to be rather long-lived."


End file.
